Trip: 69
Landmarks Visited: 3
Landmarks To-Date: 191
Landmarks Remaining: 162
On Monday after work I hopped the Lake Shore bus to Michigan Avenue to see three landmarks.
1. McCormick Double House
A quick web search didn't turn up anything about this house.
2. East Lake Shore Drive District
This district is a block long and is anchored by the Drake Hotel on west. The rest of the block is a wall of high-rise, luxury condos that runs east to Lake Michigan.
3. Reid, Murdock & Co. Building
This is a warehouse building directly on the Chicago River. Today it houses offices, including the headquarters of Encyclopaedia Britannica, riverfront restaurants and retail. I've only ever been to the building to visit Golden Triangle, a very high-end Asian antiques store. They carry items that are literally thousands of years old that I would expect to more likely find in museums.
The building itself had a small role in the worst naval tragedy in Chicago history. In 1915 a ferry called the Eastland capsized directly across the river from the Reid, Murdock building. 844 people died in the tragedy, and the building was used as a temporary hospital.
A trivia fact that I learned from the History channel is that the Titanic disaster contributed to the Eastland disaster. After the Titanic sank without enough life boats, new regulations were put into place requiring all ships to have adequate life boats for all passengers. Additional life boats were then added to the top deck of the Eastland, a boat already known to have instability problems. The additional weight of these life boats contributed to causing the Eastland to capsize.
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